The Glassblower's Breath [antikvár]

X hat night, you dreamt, that instead of dying fresh as a blade of grass, last year, one winter afternoon, your sister had lingered, until her flesh had blackened so that the moonstone on her finger stood a monstrous white against her charred skin, and the whitewashed walls beside her bed, where, in your dream, she fought grimly with death, the whitewashed walls, in your dream, spread with stains of old blood at the touch of her fingers, as death sliced into her gums like the sharp thread with which the two of you would floss your teeth after a meal of rubbery mutton. Yet, in truth, she had left you, smiling, joking of the smell of dead rats in her urine, she had settied peacefully into the arms of death, she gasped once, in mild surprise, and then the fingers fell loose upon the starched sheets, it was the image of her upturned palm that had haunted your dreams, until this night, the faint stains of turmeric upon the fingers that stretched into the tropical winter stillness. You had waited, as the smell of whitewash deepened around you, wanting to be alone in these last moments, while her blood slowly released its warmth, you waited before you woke the household, staring upon the newly lifeless palm that you did not dare touch, you were as awed by death as you had been by life, when, eight years before, your sister had held up to you her newborn child, and you had hesitated to lay your hands, teeming, as they were, with life, upon the child's uninitiated flesh. And so you had waited, as the shadows deepened, mute shadows, fresh evening wind scattered the steam that lingered upon her lifeless lips, parted in half-smile in the heavy dimness, you dreamt, that night, that those lips were compressed in terrified resignation to death, and you woke, remembering that you had begun to write of her